I’m a cheater.

See that? It’s real tea. Please don’t tell anyone. I’m trying so hard to be disciplined.

Mind you, not hard enough. It was a rough night. Why? Because when it gets hot, Toby the dog likes to climb under my bed, which is not high off the ground. Toby is a large, noisy, smelly hound. When he gets in the under-the-bed mood, he slides under there and, just like the last 10,000 times he’s done it, he can’t get out. Then he cries for hours like an I-really-want-to-shoot-you-but-cruelty-to-animals-is-wrong. And me, I’m stubborn. I just lay in bed and curse him with great persistence, often out loud and sometimes out very loud. With very bad words. Eventually, he realizes that I am not going to get up and do an Incredible Hulk to dead-lift the bed, so he scrambles and scratches and flails for five minutes (think Scooby Doo). Then, somehow he gets out. I don’t know how because I’m currently screaming into my pillow. Then, he shakes his rabies tags and goes away. Which is good, because that’s right about the time I was going to reach for the sledge hammer. For myself, obviously. I need my sleep.

All of that to say, I’m having tea (not green, thank ^#$^) and thinking about how so much of educational technology is really just business. During my doctoral work, I did a short critical analysis of the leading AI tool for teachers, MagicSchool. Touted as the panacea for all things teaching, it enraged me. “We are the cure for teacher burnout,” they said. Got it! So we are building data centers and destroying water tables and oops there goes another glacier, when really perhaps one thing we could do is hire more teachers, ensure better school infrastructure, and have smaller classes. That would be a far cheaper solution, would it not? Except that that would come from different peoples’ wallets. Teacher burnout is not because teachers lack creative ways to reach their students, I’m fairly sure. Teachers are creative. They teach because at some point, they liked the idea of helping others learn. Teacher burnout is in large part because teachers are underresourced. I know, because I hear it every Tuesday and Friday morning at the before-school table with a representative sample of fellow teachers. But outfitting them with what they actually need does not serve the folks who are profiting from the information that artificial intelligence has harvested and continues to harvest from us without our consent and/or knowledge.

When she was 13, I signed my daughter up for confirmation. What I really wanted was for her to have something solid to reject when she was 16 and not run off with a Californian cult.* The wonderful minister took the kids to temples, labyrinths, yoga classes, a Catholic church, and a mosque. When asked what she learned at the end of it all, my girl said she learned that there is no God. Or at least no God as we know it.

That’s my take on educational technology. I will share more on that soon.

Good morning, and good bye. I adore you.

* (She didn’t join a cult, of course. She went to music school.)